The Surrey Police Service will inherit 56 unsolved homicide cases from the Surrey RCMP after the SPS becomes the city’s police of jurisdiction on Nov. 29.
This does not include the 365 homicide cases to date that the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has investigated in Surrey since it took over the task from the Surrey RCMP’s serious crimes section in June 2003. So far, IHIT has cleared 206 – just over 56 per cent – and these cases, according to IHIT, “have been cleared by charge, recommended charge, or cleared otherwise.”
It does include cases between 1967 and 2003, which the Surrey RCMP’s Unsolved Homicide Unit were dealing with until that unit was folded in 2018. Since then, the Surrey RCMP’s Investigative Services Unit has had conduct of the unsolved cases. There is a separate list for missing persons.
Superintendent Darren Schneider, a 32-year policing veteran with 18 years in Surrey, is in charge of the ISU – a “large umbrella” covering serious crimes and the general investigative unit. “We have various support sections that come under that umbrella,” Schneider pointed out, including investigating cases involving arson, “vulnerable” persons and various “target enforcement.” He has roughly 160 people under him. Cold cases get assigned to investigators in the serious crimes unit. “They inherit these files.”
“The best I can tell you is the RCMP, the SPS, the Province, and the City, they’re all working to come up with some form of mechanism for anything with the transfer of files. I don’t know what that looks like at this time,” Schneider told the Now-Leader recently. “It would be a little bit inappropriate for me to make comment on it. It’s a lot of open files and I would like to know as much as anybody. Once something, a platform is put in place, then I’m sure we’ll work towards figuring something out then.”
He noted that Nov. 29 “is moving quickly ahead here.”
Sergeant Tammy Lobb, a spokeswoman for the Surrey RCMP, on Oct. 25 reiterated that “representatives with the RCMP, SPS, the City and the Province continue to meet to discuss critical transition elements such as file transfer.”
Ian MacDonald, her counterpart with the SPS, said that step "in terms of continuity obviously is an important one, and the continued partnership and collaborative efforts for public safety, including file transfer, continue with the Surrey RCMP.
“We will have some time and space to do that. There is this sort of misinformation that effective Nov. 29 all RCMP are out of Surrey and all SPS takes over all elements of policing in Surrey. Certainly the public needs to be aware of that, and everybody involved in this, from the stakeholders to Surrey RCMP to SPS, all have their focus on public safety and we want to make sure that these types of things, the transfer of evidence and the transfer of historic files and file transfer in general is done right.”
As for IHIT, MacDonald said, "It's always been in our plan (the SPS) to be a partner in integrated teams and so if there's MOUs or other agreements that have to be reached I would say it is fully our intention to be participating in those integrated teams" and IHIT would "absolutely" be in that basket.
Staff Sergeant David Lee, of IHIT, confirmed on Oct. 25 that a Memorandum Of Understanding "is being worked on by all parties. But as of right now, nothing has been officially signed."
Meantime, Surrey’s oldest unsolved homicide case dates back to Nov. 6, 1967, when seven-year-old Nancy Johnsen went missing from her family’s farmhouse in Cloverdale and her body was found the next morning, on the property, a few hundred metres away.
“That’s the oldest one on our list,” Schneider confirmed. Suspects were identified, but “unfortunately there was a car accident that killed one, and there was a suicide. So our file is still open but we’re not actively furthering the investigation because our persons of interest for that file have passed away.”
Surrey’s last murder before IHIT took over happened on Jan. 5, 2003 when a prominent member of Canada's Pakistani community, Riasat Ali Khan, 69, was shot five times in the back shortly before 11 p.m. as he walked from his car to his 99th Avenue home in Whalley. A mid-80s blue pickup truck with tinted windows and black canopy was seen leaving the area right after the shooting.
Putting the 56 cases into context, Schneider said, “When you hear this list of 56, ugh, this sounds awful but with the RCMP we end up having a significant retention period for a lot of our files.” Some RCMP files remain open for up to 80 years. “But when you look at the big picture on them, they have been from top to bottom completely investigated.”
The Johnsen case is one of these. Schneider also recalled a case where a woman’s estranged husband killed her, stopped on the Pattullo Bridge “and then he jumped off the bridge” and died. “It remains open but we know emphatically who did this and what the result was. So you have files like that, with different circumstances, that fall within that bracket of 56.”
In another case, Schneider continued, a person was charged and convicted of murder but the victim’s body was never found and “so it remains on our list. Did we get the bad guy? Yep, we absolutely did.”
Besides having been investigated by the Unsolved Homicide Unit, Schneider noted, some of the cold cases were transferred to E division headquarters “and came back.” For the Surrey RCMP, some of the 56 unsolved cases are still designated as such despite charges laid, as well as acquittals, he added. “We've gotten positive outcomes but just according to our scoring policies and procedures they are required to remain open.”
Court challenges are difficult. Schneider noted that while police may know who did it with 100 per cent certainly, there’s necessarily a high threshold to get charge approval “and sometimes that becomes difficult.”
“When you’re dealing with unsolved homicides, I think primarily, not always, but primarily two things jump out at you – is there a possibility for DNA? Because DNA was a great tool that has helped us solve a lot of cases and that’s continued to evolve with genealogy,” Schneider noted. “Science and technology, and I mean we have managed to solve a number of different files based off genealogy as well. I think that’s one avenue where files come to the forefront, and the other avenue is where people come forward and there’s different levels with that.
“There’s some people who just want to clear a conscience, or have information, but then there’s also incidences where usually it’s strategically – hopefully it was strategically – where we put out messaging to the public to bring some of these cases back to life, have you seen, do you known anything about this? Sometimes you get lucky.” Some homicide investigators form a bond with victims’ families over the years, and for those families, having a new investigator assigned to their loved one’s case can be “a little bit unsettling.”
“The continuity of files is really important because you become invested in these files, you put a lot of work into them and when they’re transferred it poses new challenges. With the cold cases, one of the policies, our internal policy, we’d always follow up with the family on an annual basis…for some of these older cases they get used to hearing from you, right.”
MacDonald reiterated that after Nov. 29 Surrey Mounties will continue to be a “much needed and valuable partner moving forward.
"You have to understand we’re not going to make Nov. 29 the end date, like for the conclusion of the transition. So a lot of the things, especially the more intricate involved things, the things that need a lot of care and attention including those historic homicides, will be moved and transitioned appropriately. We’re not just going to say hey, the calendar says Nov. 29, we have to do it today. So it will be careful, it will be considered.”
So far in 2024 Surrey has had nine homicides under investigation by IHIT. Last year there were 12, in 2022 there were 22, and 10 in 2021. In 2020 there were 12 homicides, 21 in 2019 and 15 in 2018. The most homicides the city recorded in any given year was 25 in 2013, breaking the previous record of 21 in 2005.
More cases on the Surrey RCMP’s cold case homicide list, to be transferred to the Surrey Police Service:
1970 Jan. 15: The body of Evangeline Azarcon, 8, was found in Port Kells. She'd been kidnapped from Vancouver in late 1969.
1972 March 8: Marvin Kehtler, 42, was clubbed and shot to death at his Surrey farm.
1982 Feb. 14: Hugh Mainfold, 34, was beaten to death in his Lincoln near Highway 10 and 152nd Street. April 22: Bill Heinrich, 36, was found dead at 99th Avenue and 132nd Street. His van was found at 137A Street and 107A Avenue.
1984 July 25: Bradley John Schellenberg, 21, was found in the Fraser River south of the Pattullo Bridge, dead from gunshot wounds.
1986 March 31: The body of Akhtar Chaudhry, 24, was found floating in the Nicomekl River. Aug. 21: Donna Rose Kiss, 25, was strangled with a tie and her body was dumped near 56A Avenue and 136th Street.
1992 June 24: Donna Marie Sywak, 39, and Gordon Clifford Charles Sinclair, 56, were shot dead in their house at 7561-144th Street.
1993 March 21: Doreta Mary Andrews, 49, was strangled in her townhouse at 7837 120A St. in Newton. March 31: Dorothy Britton, 80, was found stabbed to death in her tiny Newton bungalow, next to the Bonanza Motel. Aug. 4: The charred remains of what police believe was Bikker Singh Sangha, 64, were found on four trays in the Pizza King restaurant, which used to be at 12012 88th Ave.
1995 Nov. 6, 1995: Balraj Singh Rattu, 19. Unsolved Homicides Unit has conduct of this case; body has not been found. 1996 July 18: Wendy Nolan, 40, was found on the outskirts of Tynehead Park, in the 17200-block of Tynehead Drive.
1997 Oct. 28: Matt Smith, 14, was found shot dead in a ditch in the 13800-block of 58th Avenue.
1998 Jan. 18: Whalley prostitute Kelly Elizabeth Parsons, 30, was found lying in a pool of blood at the side of a dark road in Bolivar Heights. She died of head injuries. June 4: Daniel Gordon Power, 36, was stabbed to death in his home in the 11100-block of 136th Street. July 30: Ryan Charles Therrien, 28, was beaten to death in his home at 18918-76th Ave. Aug. 3: Abbotsford businessman Dennis Brian Joiner, 49, was shot to death. His body was found in a bushy area a few paces off a dirt road in the 15600-block of 34th Avenue. Nov. 18: Sikh newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer, 62, was shot dead in the garage of his home at 14768 Halstead Place in Guildford.
1999 Jan. 16: Joseph Richards, 35, was stabbed to death in Surrey and his body was later recovered in the Mamquam River in Squamish. Oct. 28: Lee Phelan Wishart, 27, was shot dead in the 10700-block of 134th Street.
2000 Aug. 18: Joe Hung-Kha Ly, 29, was found dead inside his Toyota Rav4, parked behind the Willowbrook Lanes Bowling Alley at 6350-196th Street. Nov. 24: Surrey residents Myanh Thi Nguyen, 17, and Tan Cuong Nguyen, 19, died in a hail of bullets fired from automatic weapons as they were dining at a Vietnamese restaurant at 14775 108th Ave.
2001 Jan. 15: Vancouver resident Krishan Sharma, 24, was found dead in a pond near 112th Avenue and Bridge Road, under the Pattullo Bridge. Jan. 31: Muhammed Jamshed Khan, 27, of Surrey was found dead in his car at 4 a.m., parked on the west side of Wal-Mart in Guildford. He was the driver for the notorious 626 robbery gang in 1992. Dec. 13: Angela Williams, 31, was found lying face down in a patch of weeds and gravel on the shoulder of Surrey's Colebrook Road.
